"For my people and others like me," Little Blue Hawk said, "people whose flesh comes from this land and rose out of this dust from the beginning, names have a real meaning. A name can change if a person grows out of one and into another."
"How can you grow out of your name?" I asked.
Little Blue Hawk grimaced and looked sideways at me without turning her head. "You become someone new," she said. "Twisted Spear, my mother's brother, grew out of that name one summer. He went out with his brothers and a few others. They made camp by the river. On the fourth night a storm blew in. The storm swelled the river in the dark and the water swallowed the camp before they could climb high enough. They all drowned. All except Twisted Spear who awoke on a far bank the next morning. He returned home alone and after the mourning was over, began to be called Spared by the River. You see? Twisted Spear drowned along with his brothers and Spared by the River was born."
Little Blue Hawk smiled and reached her hand over to me and pushed and clump of hair away from my face.
"You look too sad, Judah. Why?"
I shook my head and swallowed the lump in my throat.
"It's almost like one of Early's stories."
"I haven't heard them."
"If you stay with us long enough, I guarantee you, you will."
Little Blue Hawk nodded.
"What name were you born with?" I asked.
"The one you call me by. I was born into it, though. Not with it."
"How come?"
"The day I was born, a hawk from the East, where the trouble came from, flew into the reservation. It landed on my parents' roof the moment my mother felt the first pains of labor. Eventually it settled on the windowsill outside the birthing room. It stayed all day and night. At the dawn of the second day, I was born and with my first cry, the hawk cried, too. When the people looked, the first light of morning slanted down from the sky and shone upon the hawk and upon me. Over the course of the night, the hawk had changed colors, from gray to blue. When the sun was completely above the horizon, the bird flew away. I was left in its place but the Old Ones say it was a guardian and so I would hold it in me. Little Blue Hawk is my namesake. I go where my wings carry me and I watch over. I have not outgrown my name."
"You're watching over us."
"For the time I'm here."
She blew out a breath and gathered dust from the ground in her fingers, then let it fall. "There's an eastern wind blowing," she said, looking up. "But you give the White Man a better face."

"Val?"
"Judah?"
"Hi."

Valentine looked me over as if to make sure I was real as opposed to an apparition. He'd done his time searching on foot for us in the desert and a fair share of it trapped inside a mirage. "Spent my life since then wondering if it weren't a mirage that just kept on going. After all, they say the last moment of your life and every dream you ever dreamed or ever would dream flash in front of your eyes so that it's like living it all over again or for the first time," he'd told me and Phin once.
But we were in the present moment and I'd gone lone on an exit local road.

Val looked up from his newspaper from the other side of the counter and gave me his full attention.
"What are you doing here?"
I looked right back and shrugged.
"I got lost."
Valentine laughed and shook his head.
"Lost! It's impossible for you to get lost, Judah." Right. I have no base. How can I get myself lost when I've never had a place to be found? "Where's your mother? Your brother?"
"I'm alone," I said.
Valentine drew his brow into a furrow and looked me over good.
"She really did you in good, didn't she? I told her it would catch up with her one day."
I laughed.
"Well...we all grow up sometimes," I said. "Maybe Early's is still happening. Her growing up, that is. Has to have the road."
"Or maybe she's just running."
"Maybe mine is standing still. Or learning how to. But I don't feel grown up."

As we stood there talking to each other over the counter in Val's hard-earned/hard-worked convenience store, I noticed that his eyes had begun to wrinkle, little cracks, creases, around the edges that hadn't been there before. Maybe some people never grow up--like Early--and maybe others stay young on the inside but grow old on the outside. I wondered which I would do. A mix of dirt and sky and water.

"Well, come on," Val said and folded up the paper before putting it down in a shelf under the counter.
I smiled and followed him through the doorway. Half-way down the hall, Val stopped and half-turned to look at me.
"You got lost, huh?" he chuckled as if to himself. "You fell in love, didn't you? Or was it really only your mother's craziness?"
I couldn't help but let a smile crack out the corner of my mouth.
"I got lost. Lots of ways."
"Was she on the road, too?"
"Yeah. No Wheels. And not like us. But she was wandering, too."
"What's her name?"
"Little Blue Hawk."
Valentine raised an eyebrow.
I nodded.
"It's a long story," I said.
Like the road. But maybe longer, 'cause Little Blue Hawk got me to sleep atn ight and shut the nightmare out.

"Little Judah boy man, I sees me a fine lookin' hella fire of a whatso beauty up there on that horizon," Phinnaeus declared.
I barely heard him through my sleep, but I turned over and groaned. He punched me.
"Wake up, little brother."
"What is it!"
"We's got us a beauty," he said.
And I got up, right in the middle of the day no less and Phin had the wheel while Early was napping in the back with me. I looked over at my mother and climbed carefully around her and up into the front seat. Up in the middle of the bare rock mountain road with her long hair blowing around her like a protective veil and her thumb held out for a hitch was the most beautiful goodamned thing I ever seen.

Phin, my brother, slowed with his foot on the brake and I looked out the rolled-down window at her. I stared for who-knows-how-long and she smiled with a wall over her eyes like our Early. Like me.

"Gettin' in, yo?" Phin said, leaning over me.
She nodded and Phin punched me in the bicep.
"What!" I hissed and punched him back.
"Open up, little brother! Whatso man you gone stupid?"
"Shut," I said and twisted around to open the slider door.
"Watch out, miss," Phin said to her. "Our momma's dead asleep in the back you be sharin' a lift in now."
The girl nodded and in acknowledgment and climbed in with one, swift motion.

"Valentine?"
Valentine Russel looked up from newspaper he was reading from behind the counter he presided over. I swallowed in my desert-dry throat. He scrunched up his forehead and looked at me. It had been a long time.
"Judah?"
I nodded.
"Judah!" he exclaimed and stood up. "Where's your brother and Early?"
"I'm alone," I said.
"You're alone?"
How could this be. I know. Times had gotten long and short so that I measured time in the thickness of dust on the dashboard. People grew up after all, and now I was doing mine.
"I'm alone. Phin's somewhere on the road. Early is, too."
Valentine looked me over for a minute and tried to read me but I was my mother's son after all. When the door was shut, no one could open it.

Without thinking, I ran. In retrospect, how could I have ever been so stupid? But a child is ignorant, and so was I. I'd put the babies in the barn alone. Seven months old and almost consumed by fire because of my thoughtlessness. But Betty never protested. There had been many nights she'd put me to sleep in the barn on the hay. What are the odds? Thus are the tribulations born of staying in one place.

I ran into the pitch black smoke and followed my instinct through the flickering flames and the acrid air to where I'd put the boys. Betty was near me, but it didn't matter. I hardly felt her. Once I'd been consumed by water, drowned in it, buried. Now, I'd begun to rebuild and fire would destroy me all over again.

"Here, Agnes! The babies are here!" Betty yelled through the din.
A surge of fury swept through me and rushed to them and tore Betty away.
"Don't you touch them! Don't touch them!" I screamed and I yanked her away from my children and scooped them up in their blankets and covered them. I squeezed them into me and ran, navigating through the burning barn blindly. Part of me registered that I was being burned, the flames licking me, grabbing at my arms and legs.

My baby Judah was choking and when I'd gotten far away, onto the road, out of sight of the barn, I put them down. Phin was silent and Judah was choking, but Judah was all right. I turned to Phin and unwrapped him from the blanket, put my hand over his body and felt for breathing. He was alive. Both of them, alive. More than alive, absolutely unharmed.

"Judah boy," I whispered and the baby looked up at me, his choking gradually fading away. I stroked his cheek and he gurgled, a little baby gurgle and I was satisfied.

Then, I turned to Phinnaeus. The baby stared up at me, had been watching me. His gaze was eerily mature, not the gaze of a child, not the gaze of an infant. "Phinny,"I breathed in his ear as I lifted him up to my shoulder. "Phinny," I said again, but the baby didn't make a sound. I held him at arm's length in front of me, and somehow, I could see his eyes clearly in the dark. Fear had made my senses particularly acute tonight. I'd almost lost them and I need every moment. Still, I could lose them. Phinnaeus stared at me accusingly, his expression pointing out all my flaws. His gaze and his silence said one thing: "You left us, Early Silver. You left us to burn."

A firetruck passed us on the road, sirens screaming full ahead. Then another, then another. A violent shudder passed through me and came back. Then didn't stop. Something was missing and it was my fault again. Suddenly, I remembered Betty. I'd pushed her away in the middle of the flames. Where was she? A demon awoke in my stomach and I put Phinnaeus down, got up, clambered a few steps away and vomited.

I turned back to the boys knelt on my knees before them and knew I had to get out of the road. First water, then fire. I couldn't risk more with earth, matter hurling itself full speed at us down the road. At least this one would be painless and instant. "No. Don't think like this," I thought. I gulped down air and steadied myself. "Mind over matter, Early. Mind over matter," I repeated over and over until I had control of my body. When my limbs were steady and my breathing regular, I stood up and stretched. In the distance, I could hear the firemen working and the crackling of the fire being put out. I picked up the boys and held them to me, squeezed them hard for a moment. Judah yelped. Phin groaned.

I looked both way down the road and turned back towards the house and put one foot in front of the other. For better or worse, I had to find Betty.